The parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee voted 30-23 to keep a provision out of the proposed Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework that required all cryptocurrencies to be subject to the EU’s “minimum environmental sustainability standards with respect to their consensus mechanism.”

This would have meant a ban on proof-of-work mining, which is used by bitcoin, as well as ether and litecoin. The provision would have required these cryptocurrencies to phase out their use of proof-of-work and switch to the less energy-intensive proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

Proof-of-stake is already used by most newer cryptos and there are plans for ether to make the switch this year, but there is no such plan for bitcoin.

While rejecting the provision, the committee agreed to ask the EC to include crypto-assets mining in the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities by 2025 to reduce its carbon footprint.